Characterization of Autonomy in Merchant Ships

Autonomous ships are creating significant interest in the maritime world and the need for a more consistent definition framework is very apparent. This paper suggests building a framework based on the SAE J3016 standard for autonomous cars, but to extend it where necessary. One main difference is that ships are larger, slower and fewer than cars, but that consequences of accidents may be more severe. This is a typical characteristic of industrial autonomous systems. For ships one also must consider a more complex functional system (duration of voyage, energy, steering, hull integrity and stability etc.) as well as a very likely possibility that autonomous ships will be supervised form shore. This points to a constrained autonomy, where the system has programmable limits to the actions it may take. This creates a more complex taxonomy, in terms of the operational scenario possibilities, in how the control problem is solved and how responsibilities are divided between humans and computer systems.